Here's a long, serious question that might apply to our children, or possibly to some extent even ourselves in our lifetimes. Read it if you're in the mood to think a little...

Assume biomechanics advances to the point when it can synthetically duplicate the functionality of all parts on a human body with exception to the human brain. (This isn't that far off.)

You lose your leg in an accident. No problem, replace the leg, works fine.
Your heart is burnt out from too much Pizza. Replace heart, and clean arteries, A.O.K.
Your liver is screwed from all that college drug use, alcohol, and partying. Replace the liver.
And on and on...

Assuming the continued replacement of everything that fails or breaks (except your brain), at what point do we lose our humanity and/or our soul - i.e. At what point would you say that your mom is not your mom anymore if she were able to extend her lifespan through parts replacement? Does our brain determine our humanity? our soul? or does it lie in some other combination of our organic makeup...

Remember also, that although mechanical internal organs might not resemble their organic counterparts, due to human vanity something like skin's replacement will. and it will also probably be impervious to age and sun damage, it will be baby soft forever. You're not gonna look like Robby the Robot. Then again, maybe you will. We will be mechanically immortal by switching out parts as necessary.

all replies appreciated, i have been wondering about this since college...

 

Given the constraints you mentioned - no matter what, that person will still be the person they started off as.

Or another way to look at it - even if nothing gets "replaced" as in your scenario, everybody is always different. We're constantly changing. If I loan money to somebody I trust and they skip town, I'm certainly not the same person I was the day before.

 

This is getting real close to "religion" which the forum might object to so let me put my bucks worth (inflation) in before that happens.
I'm not one who believes in a "soul", at least not in the religious sense. We are who we are by the way we think, the memories we possess. It is our minds that dictate who and what we are. However, if we changed enough body parts, we would easily see ourselves as something that is different from what we were but it is still the same "mind's eye". Let's go out on a limb here. If I were to do a brain trade with someone (it doesn't matter who), where am "I"? "I" go where my brain goes because it is what is in my brain (memories, thought patterns, view of the world outside) that determines "self".

 

Art, a friend of mine, once told me a story about his grandfather. He needed a heart transplant. His grandfather refused because he looked at his grandmother and said, "I can't replace the heart that loves you." He died several months later.

Now, it is a sweet story, but reality is - we must survive and try to survive no matter what the costs. Having other parts isn't going to change people, but the process from which those transplants occur will change a person's outlook into how expendable some parts are: everything becomes an automobile - everything can be replaced if run down or broken. Some healthy cultures will be like Hondas, and others will be more like Ferraris - if not driven on a regular basis, mucho work will need to be done.

Anthropoligy studies have shown that people from hundreds of years ago, or even thousands of years ago had healthy teeth. They didn't have all the additives that give cavities and turn our teeth un-white. They didn't have companies that control addictions to certain products either; products that make us have lung surgery.

Well, that's my little input into this thread for now, probably not too constructive, but its just a few tangent thoughts.

 

All bit deep this for a Sunday morning - and my knowledge of biology is sub comic strip level.

But wd 'self' be the same if your brain was transplanted to a body of another sex? or assuming you are a 6' 6" athlete into the body of a 4' paraplegic? or vice versa? From a 20 year old to a 96 year old?

Thought the brain (or 'self') was partly controlled by chemicals - if you swapped enough spare parts - could you change the chemical balance and hence 'self'?

 

In the immortal words of a Star Trek episode, we are just ' bags of mostly water'.
As long as you keep the same brain, you will surely remain the sane person.

 

My view is that if you replaced the human body organ by organ, providing that the brain was not replaced, or if it was it was replaced by a structure that is physically identical, personality and memories would be the same. After all we make memories by creating new physical links between neurones.

In my opinion there is no such thing as a soul, well at least I don't have one.

A soul is just a concept developed by religius leaders that did not have the knowledge we do today.

 

Spot on

 

Although your question is couched in terms of bio-mechanics and cyborg terminolgy, your talking about a problem all cultures have tried to deal with throughout their existence: mortality. The wish to live forever has resulted in the elaborate fabrication of numerous afterlife scenarios.

Gods were invented by man to explain his existence and insure him life everlasting. These gods gave everyone hope and meaning as well as helping the leaders (who usually positioned themselves as representatives of the prevailing gods) to maintain control of the population as city-states grew into otherwise unmanagable entities.

No matter how lousy your personal existence might be, the promise of a better world after the current one helped keep the populace in line (hopefully). Life everlasting has a very alluring attraction, albeit a bit far-fetched to me.

The Six Million Dollar man scenario is simply a modern, secular manifestation of this eternal life desire. I think the quality, and not the quantity, of life is what is most important

 

I have an even more perplexing question.

If a gay man clones himself, and has sex with his clone, has he committed incest or masturbation?